Too Many Cooks Spoil the Cake
by Arlath's Star
Summary: There’s chaos in Ianto’s kitchen when Jack decides that a team baking session is just what they all need. Ianto, needless to say, is not particularly impressed.


**My best friend and I just had a baking spree, and this (and a pile of variously edible goodies) is the result! And we baked a brownie with 'J & I' written on the top in mini-eggs. Does that make us fangirls?**

**Timing: Owen's alive. That's all you need to know. Enjoy!**

* * *

Ianto looked round his kitchen in despair. "Why did I sign up for this?"

He got more than one answer as Jack, Gwen and Owen all answered at the same time:

"Because you love me, Yan!"

"Because it's fun!"

"Because at heart, Teaboy, you're secretly a masochist."

Tosh just shrugged – she was just glad that they hadn't decided to use her house.

Team Torchwood were trying to cook. 'Trying' being the operative word. Currently, Ianto's kitchen looked more like a baking supplies factory in which a bomb had exploded than a fun team get-together with biscuit-baking. And, Ianto being Ianto, every single spilled grain of flour grated on his nerves like a misfiled report. And as for the raw egg that was currently dripping its way down the side of his once pristine work surface… no, he wasn't even going to think about that. This was for the greater good.

"Owen, when it says '170 grams' it _means_ '170 grams'." Tosh explained patiently. "Not whatever happens to be left at the bottom of the bag."

"I'm good at estimating." Owen protested, ignoring the reading on the scales which quite plainly told him that they were short by 100 grams worth of sugar.

Jack, who was examining a recipe for biscuits, had a measuring problem of his own. "Why can't they put the measurements in pounds and ounces as well as grams? And how much is a litre?"

Sighing, Ianto went over to help sort out the problem, the egg yolk eyeing him as he went. He wasn't the greatest cook himself, but he could at least translate imperial measures into metric.

"Will it matter much if I use plain flour instead of self-raising?" Gwen asked blithely.

A chorus of hasty replies came back: "Yes!"

Gwen raised her hands in self-defence. "Sorry! I don't bake much."

"I can tell." Tosh murmured quietly, and got an amused glance off Jack.

"Let me guess – Rhys doesn't let you near the kitchen."

Gwen ignored Owen's smirk. "No I just don't get much time to cook, that's all. What with having to be able to work 24/7, and all that."

Ianto paused from stirring the bun mixture. "We're going to get a Rift alert in the middle of this, aren't we?"

"Wouldn't surprise me if we did." Jack joked. "That thing has a brilliant sense of timing – someday we ought to investigate whether it actually works by choosing the worst possible moment to kick off."

There was silence for a few moments as they all pondered this before the next interruption came.

"Can I crack the eggs?"

"Owen, we've only just got enough."

Owen's eyes narrowed at Tosh. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"I think Toshiko is trying to point out that we need the eggs in the bowl, not on the ceiling like last time, Owen." Jack elaborated, reaching for the eggs.

In the corner, Ianto winced. He winced even more at the sound of Owen's amused snort which followed the cracking noise of the eggs. "I thought you said we 'needed the eggs in the bowl'?"

Jack shrugged. "Yeah, well they've got weaker shells than Skefron eggs. Taste better though."

Ianto reopened his eyes as Tosh took over, meticulously breaking each egg so that every drop landed in the mixture, then retreated back into his corner and hunched over his mixing bowl again at the sound of Gwen's latest exclamation.

"Oh no!"

"What?"

"The instructions say you're supposed to chop the dates first." Gwen's eyes flickered up and down the cookbook pages again, only to have it snatched away from her by Owen.

"Yeah, 'leave the chopped dates to soak in boiling water…'"

"Boiling water? Oh no…"

Owen stuck his finger in the bowl of decidedly cold water. "Did you read the recipe at all?"

"Yes!"

"What about preheating the oven? Did you do that?" Owen looked up to watch Gwen's reaction. "Gas mark 4." he added helpfully.

Ianto blocked Gwen's way as she hurried towards the oven. "It's fine. I already set it to preheat for the buns." Ianto did not trust his team-mates with his oven – he still wanted a flat at the end of all this. Even though it was looking like he would no longer have a kitchen.

"What flavour are we making these biscuits?" Tosh asked, having left Owen reluctantly creaming their mixture together, a rebellious look in his eye.

"Lemon."

"Ginger."

"Coffee."

"Almond."

Tosh shook her head. "We can't have them all! I vote for lemon."

With varying degrees of agreement lemon juice was duly added, but as soon as Tosh's back was turned, Owen, after finding the spice-rack, sneakily added a teaspoon of ginger as well. And then when Tosh was advising Gwen what to use as a substitute for double cream he decided to add half a teaspoon of nutmeg in as well, just to see what it tasted like, and stirred it in well.

Jack and Ianto had got the furthest – their tray of buns was already in the oven. After a quick consensus they decided to start work on a brownie as well.

Owen added a dash of vanilla extract.

On the other side of the kitchen, Tosh rescued Gwen's toffee sauce before it decided to leave the pan and set up a home of its own. Unbeknownst to her, Owen's eyes were busy scanning the spice rack, looking for the most intriguing-sounding names. He eventually went for 'tarragon', followed closely by 'five spice'.

Her sticky toffee pudding finished (although by now half of it should probably have been classed as Tosh's) Gwen bounced over to help Jack and Ianto with their brownie. During the brief discussion over what would happen if mini-eggs were added to the mix, Owen took the opportunity to liven up his own baking with a pinch of chilli powder.

"Is it ready yet?" Tosh asked as she peered over his shoulder, having returned from rescuing Gwen's hapless attempts at baking. "It smells a bit weird."

"I just knocked one of the other bottles over on the side." Owen lied smoothly, noticing Ianto flinch at his words out of the corner of his eye.

Tosh nodded distractedly, and poured a little more lemon juice in. "That's better." She sniffed the air. "Who's burning chocolate?"

Everyone instinctively turned to Gwen, and while she was protesting her innocence Ianto leapt over to the stove, seizing the small pan that sat on it.

"I didn't know you could burn chocolate." Owen commented with interest as he leant over the pan. "That looks…"

"Disgusting." Tosh finished off. "Do they really put all that stuff in chocolate?"

"The list's on the back of the packet." Jack laughed. "What do you guys_ think_ you're eating? Don't you ever look?"

Everyone shrugged. Why should they bother looking? Calories were hardly their biggest health threat.

"What did we do wrong?" Ianto asked, and Tosh quickly started to explain how you were supposed to use a bowl set over a pan of boiling water. Soon they had another lot of chocolate on the go, whilst the others rolled the biscuit dough out. There were various arguments over how the biscuits should be shaped, so in the end they each got their own portion of dough. The result was a baking tray full of stars, hearts, circles, spirals, 'aliens', initials, bats (someone had found a box of novelty Halloween cutters) and strange, unexplainable blodges.

A similar thing happened with the buns when they emerged from the oven, due to an argument over what colour the icing should be. Soon Ianto's table was covered with splashes of various multi-coloured liquids, some of them in very strange shades. Owen's black was too watery, Gwen's pink too solid (and also more like orange), and an unfortunate accident in which Jack's blue and Ianto's red had been combined had left them with brown icing. The icing bag was quickly confiscated, as only Tosh and Gwen seemed concerned in using it to create patterns, whilst the others preferred messages. (As Gwen pointed out, no-one was going to want to eat a bun with 'Poison' or 'Snog Ianto' written on it)

In all the excitement, they nearly forgot the rest of their confectionary masterpieces. Everyone was faintly surprised when Gwen's toffee pudding turned out perfectly, though they were all slightly perturbed by the way the brownie moved from side to side when the tray was tipped, as though a tidal wave was passing through a swamp.

They decided to test the biscuits first, however.

"What the -?" Jack threw the biscuit down in disgust. "What on earth did you put in these? Some alien chemical you sneaked out of the Hub?"

"We used lemons, I think." Tosh replied, taking a tentative nibble of her own biscuit. She pulled a face.

Gwen sniffed hers carefully. "It smells like curry powder." she accused.

As one, they all turned to glare at Owen.

"What? I didn't put any curry powder in." Owen replied honestly. "Why would I do that?"

Ianto took a bite of his own to see if it was as bad as they were making out, then rushed out of the room.

Jack pushed a biscuit into Owen's hand. "Either you tell us what went in it or you eat one yourself. All of it."

Owen's gaze shifted between them. "Flour and butter and sugar and lemon juice…" he trailed off, but the others continued to glare at him. "… and vanilla essence and ginger and nutmeg and tarragon and five spice and chilli powder." he admitted. "And some of the water from Gwen's dates too, I think. Nothing inedible." He looked round at their unimpressed faces.

"You added what?" Ianto asked incredulously as he staggered weakly back into the room, holding his throat. "I swallowed that!"

Gwen looked down miserably at her own half-eaten biscuit. Suddenly she didn't feel like trying any more of the food they'd just baked.

"Well, that clears one thing up then." Jack announced, grinning broadly. "Guess who's clearing up, Owen!"

One glance round the flour-strewn, dough-splattered, egg-coated, chocolate-smudged, syrup-smeared, sugar-dusted kitchen and Owen decided that maybe experimental baking wasn't quite his thing after all.

* * *

**I don't actually set out to write Gwen-bashing stories. It's just that I tend to hand my characteristics over to her (on the basis that they normally suit her better than the others), so if I misread the recipe/use the wrong type of flour/basically mess up so does she. Although I did let Jack and Ianto burn the chocolate.**

**Baking tip: if you use plain flour instead of self-raising flour when baking drop scones you get little pancakes instead. This is not advised. **

**If you review I will send you pieces of imagianry brownie with 'J [heart] I' written on it, unless you're L.A.H.H., in which case you've already got some. **


End file.
